


Jaegertroth

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Barry is 13, Gen, Gore, His dad is alive, Implied/Referenced Torture, Joy and Happiness For All, Transformation, i lie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3065789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill thought they might find survivors. Barry wasn't deluding himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm seeing this as fairly short, five chapters tops, and I'm in the middle of writing chapter 3, but this could yet take a swerve on me and end up pretty different or a ton longer or suddenly an epic twenty-parter. I don't know.

Bill thought they might find survivors. Barry wasn't deluding himself.

He followed his elder brother down the corridors, the two of them surrounded on all parts by an avalanche of grim-faced jaegers. None of them spoke; some were grinding their teeth hard enough that Barry could hear over the tread of their booted heels and leathery, clawed feet on the floor. There was too much stone between them and the main fight (between Bill and Barry's father and his friend) to hear any explosions, but sometimes Barry would see one of the hanging chandeliers, trembling from the onslaught already, actually _swing_.

(The worst thing about the place was that the hidden parts were just as well-lit and clean and cheerily decorated as the rest.)

"Hoy," General Goomblast said from his place at Barry's right hand, quiet and firm; everyone ground to a halt. "Hy schmell chemicals."

Bill turned, rocked on his heels, glanced at Barry and then, meaningfully, up at Goomblast's imposing body. Barry gave an imperceptible nod and Bill turned away, hopped his casual way up onto a jaeger's back to get a better view of the walls. "Getting close!" he said cheerfully.

"Get searchink, boys," the General ordered. Barry tried, and failed once again, to read his face.

They'd asked their father for Goomblast, because between him and Gargantua -- between him and all other Generals, really -- he was the most polite, most reasonable, most -- as their mother said -- _civilized_. That didn't necessarily mean he would show any pity, any give.

"Hyu iz not helping?" Goomblast asked him sotto voce as they watched the squad go over the whole section of corridor, their noses almost touching the floor.

A trap flung arrows at Zudok and Edi and they batted them away casually without looking up. Barry supposed that after Castle Heterodyne's morning greetings this came off as rather half-hearted. Still, there had been no traps in the secret corridor up until now. Promising.

"Analyzing," Barry replied, trying to sound serious and thoughtful; his voice predictably cracked in the middle, but Goomblast did not smile. "I think that--"

" _Minsk! Grab me that chandelier!_ "

" _Right avay, Master Bill!_ "

A clang rang along the corridor as the jaeger's full weight came to hang from the chandelier. And then came a ratcheting chain noise, and a wall swung predictably open. Barry looked back up at Goomblast.

"...Yes, that."

"Mmh." Goomblast's goggles turned away from him; the giant frowned. "Master Villiam, hyu vill _not_ step into dere first."

"A Heterodyne doesn't lead from the back!" Bill protested loudly, and entirely counter-factually -- there were several reasons their ancestors had developed super-soldiers who could take a beating, and most of them amounted to 'I like a meat shield that hits back'.

Barry didn't wait for Goomblast to talk Bill out of it; the second the massive wall of a man turned away to stop his brother he was advancing into the opening.

He wasn't stupid, either, so he pointed at four of the jaegers to come in around him.

"Hyu iz de heir! Hyu leads from de back, or not at all -- master _Barry_."

"I'm already in, General," Barry said without really thinking about the words, eyes roaming the wide room, cataloguing everything. "I'm not coming back out now."

It wasn't Lord Liviu's labs they'd found; the labs must be next door.

These were the experimental subjects pens.

And the refuse.

Behind and around him jaegers filtered in, noses wrinkling; Barry's guard stayed in diamond formation around him as he moved slowly toward the center of the room.

"How's it looking?" his brother called out from the corridor, where Goomblast barred the way with a single huge paw. Bill sounded hopeful, but that was only a quick papering over tension, over what he could read of Barry's body language already.

Barry scanned the room once again.

It was really pretty hideous how cheerily the room was decorated. Any blood splashes would only add to the flowering trees and flying petals painted over the sky-blue walls. The gutter tiles had little motifs hand-painted on them.

"I don't --"

The piles of carrion that used to be people were familiar -- God knew his father had left enough of them for Bill and Barry to observe firsthand over the years -- but they managed to look even worse in here.

"...Very weird aesthetic," he managed.

The cages were full of unmoving people, most of them too warped to possibly be alive -- organs hanging on the outside, bone spurs grown through their own bodies, ribs curling open like obscene flowers.

At Barry's right hand Cosmin gave up being quiet, started muttering under his breath, voice thrumming like a growl. Mostly a lot of vile curse words, in more languages and dialects than Barry knew.

"How he effen _dare_ \--"

"Cosmin," Barry said. Cosmin's jaw snapped closed, but he didn't -- couldn't? -- stop the growl.

Barry understood, though. In a very detached way, very far away. Because right now he wasn't angry at all, or only a strangely calm sort of anger.

It was like the Madness Place -- might _be_ the Madness Place still, but it wasn't about taking apart the universe to rebuild it better.

He thought if his father came down right now and asked him if he was sure, _very_ sure he wouldn't give a hand against Lord Liviu after all, Barry might change his mind.

"Sir! Ve gots live ones here!"

Barry took off without a second thought. Behind him he could hear Bill trying to sneak around Goomblast, being reeled back in despite his protests.

"Live experiments?" Barry asked as he closed in, feeling every inch of height his legs did not have yet. He wished he could have asked the jaegers to grab him one to an arm and carry him ahead, but they weren't in that kind of hurry.

The jaeger who had called looked like he regretted it a little. "Hy meant de sergeant, Master--"

" _Move_."

The jaeger moved. "Und Hy meant -- no, Master Barry. Not experiments."

In the cage in the far corner -- three crones still living, a crippled man, a little girl. (Several corpses; ignore those, too late now.) Still human -- probably leverage, they weren't appropriate test subjects. Dehydrated, probably starved, in shock -- it was cold in here, if you didn't wear appropriate clothing and had a less healthy layer of flesh than Barry himself had.

He snapped his fingers. "You and you, get the cage open. Karlo, look for blankets, cleanish clothes, anything warm. Mile, check the water supply for contaminants -- wait, here." He handed him a half-dozen pellets. "Drop them in, if the water turns colors it's not good." What else -- he felt like he was forgetting...

"Might still be a trap," one of the jaegers working on prying the bars apart said, a bit dubiously.

"If I get killed by people in _this_ state," Barry growled back (more like a sulky huff, so childish,) "I'll deserve it."

And then one of the old women flinched at the harmonics in his voice, just a little, eyes glassy, and he. Oh. Yes. That was what he'd forgotten.

He stepped closer cautiously, more for them than for him, crouched.

"Um. Hello. I'm Barry. We'll have you out of there in a minute. Are any of you hurt?"

The little girl twitched like she wanted to maybe move closer, but the old woman looked up at the jaegers and pressed a little tighter against the bars at her back.

There were more dead than living people in this cage. But they hadn't been touched, _experimented_ on, the jaegers would _know_ if they had -- so he could probably... his father wouldn't care. He and Bill could save these. Release them. They were just unlucky peasants...

Four out of seventy.

"Heterodyne," the old lady whispered in that terrified, horrified way Barry couldn't --

"Yes," he said quietly, and tried on a smile. "We won't hurt you. There's no reason."

She didn't seem to believe him. Another of the old ladies didn't look very conscious. The little girl looked lost, hearing the terror in her -- grandma's? neighbor's? voice, and not knowing yet why, why dying of thirst in a cage full of corpses might not be the worst thing happening to them anymore.

"Bill?" he called out, craning his neck, and got back on his feet. He felt all of his thirteen years' awkwardness -- out of proportions, chubby with stubborn baby fat, not even that tall for his age. They still flinched in there. Barry scanned the area for his brother, found him inside the room but only just, one of Goomblast's hands set very firmly on his shoulder.

Well. Goomblast might think this was less dangerous than nosing around the rest of the lab.

"Bill, I found you conversation partners! In case you were bored in the corner. Maybe."

... As a pithy, yet not alarming way to indicate he'd found someone who needed to be charmed into trusting them, it lacked a certain _something_. Best he could do right now. He made a mental note to practice his one-liners.

Bill grinned, less like happiness and more like determination, squared his shoulders under General Goomblast's huge mitt. "While you prance around and get into everything, I see!"

"Hey, being the spare has got to be good for something," Barry retorted -- too fast, thoughtless, because being the heir was worse in some ways, and because...

Being the sons of their father was bad either way. When they were younger, though, when their father had started taking Bill out of the nursery, leaving Barry behind to be bored and not special and left out, when Bill started strutting around like he was hot stuff -- when Bill started to not want to share what he'd learned, started being quiet and serious like Barry was a _baby_ \-- there was a time they would throw those statuses in each other's faces during arguments, pointed and vicious like only siblings could be.

He swallowed, and almost said sorry, only they were in the middle of a room full of dead people -- _failed experiments, take notes on the failures and discard them, Barry_ \-- and full of jaegers and --

"It's good for plenty of things!" Bill assured him as he trotted closer, casual like it hadn't meant a thing to him, and clapped his shoulder in passing. Goomblast, nostrils flaring in annoyance, followed at a long walk.

Maybe annoyance, maybe something else.

"Hy count betveen seventy und eighty corpses," he said quietly to Barry as Bill made his way to the cage. Barry had been, once again, taking notes on what his brother was doing with his voice, his face, his body, what strange alchemy made people respond to him so readily. There had to be a formula, and once he grasped it...

"Eighty?" Barry groaned, and glanced at the room. The jaegers were done looking for traps; a squad had gone to the lab proper next door looking for more victims.

The rest -- the calmer ones -- were laying out the deformed corpses and their varying loose parts in countable rows.

The castle trembled all around them, though they were deep in the basement, probably safe from whatever their father was currently unleashing on Lord Liviu.

Lord Liviu...

 _Uncle Liviu_ , Barry used to call him, not really family but a friend anyway, trusted.

His father had _loved_ that man. Now all Barry could think was that he hoped the Heterodyne would spare Liviu's family when he was done grinding him into dust.

The corpses had mostly died in the early stages of jaegerization, but some were very advanced. _General-age_ advanced. Barry couldn't think how he'd kept them alive that long -- or maybe the transformation had happened so suddenly, yes, the bone structure there, the way the muscle was torn over it, that was clearly a case of the body growing much faster than its ability to sustain its own growth, that pattern of broken blood vessels on the face hinted at a benign heart defect suddenly becoming catastrophic. From the half-healed pricks on its elbows there must have been a feeding solution, but it obviously hadn't --

"The stupidest thing iz," Goomblast said, quiet and heavy, "hyu poppa vould haff lent some ov us to him iffen he asked."

Barry could only grunt an acknowledgement, throat suddenly gone tight.

He'd seen worse, was the thing.

Never on his own people.

Liviu had done this to his own people. This was a whole village, emptied, thrown in the labs, and it was impossibly obvious how many of them wouldn't have been suitable from the very start -- too young, too old, not healthy, not strong enough.

One last cage to empty and he could go over the labs for any stray notes Liviu might have taken on his attempts to recreate the jaegerdraught, and then burn it all down. Suddenly he wanted that, wanted cleansing by fire for the whole series of rooms, for the whole building, the art pieces and the piano room for daring to sit above this.

He'd probably have to burn down Castle Heterodyne a dozen times over if he wanted not to die from an attack of hypocrisy.

Fire still sounded pretty efficient. For the notes and for the corpses both.

"-- _Gotterdammerung_."

Barry looked up. The last cage was open, Pali half-inside it, holding a corpse that looked remarkably like him by the ankles. He was staring at something Barry couldn't see, blocked by the width of his back, and --

And then he flew out backwards and the cage rattled.

The jaeger landed in a roll, Barry didn't check, Pali could handle a fall, he could -- no, he'd thrown himself back, to avoid...

... To avoid...

"Satan's sveet teats," someone said. Barry was pretty sure that was what they'd said.

There was a foot pressed against the bars, extended at the tail end of a kick. A leg emerging from tattered pants, emerging from between corpses. Skin a mottled gray, like rock more than like a corpse's.

The toes were slowly curling around the bars, too long and claw-tipped.

"Ve've gots a live vun!" Goomblast snapped, and two jaegers had Barry under the armpits and were hauling him back to the middle of the room in the next second, and then he and Bill were surrounded by jaegers, three deep. Barry squirmed, tugged; beside him Bill was struggling with a great deal more enthusiasm.

"It's just _one_ jaeger," Bill said with frustration, "you're not going to tell me you need that many people--"

"Ve don't _know_ vhat it is," Jorgi interrupted, frowning.

No one moved in on the cage for a few seconds, almost half a minute, and then Bill elbowed his guard in the ribs.

"At least let us _watch_. What is he doing?"

"Notink?" someone reported hesitantly.

"Jah, iz not movink, just de toes a bit."

Barry wondered how many hours he had spent smothered by the corpses. Jaegers could take ridiculous amounts of damage and strain, but Jorgi was right, they didn't know what this one was. What he could do. What he...

... A fifth survivor.

A fifth _victim_. A successful experiment. A _stolen_ experiment.

A betrayal of everything the jaegerkin stood for.

He hadn't really thought Liviu would succeed. Probably none of the jaegers had either, from the consternation on oddly-colored faces, the downturn on too-large mouths.

As nothing else happened, they spread out a little, let Bill and Barry have some visibility back; didn't let them move any closer, though.

"Poke him through de bars," Goomblast said. " _Gently!_ "

Bogdan slowly lifted his halberd back toward the ceiling, mouth pursed and eyebrows up like Goomblast was being unreasonable, and then tiptoed his way to the cage, and proceeded to tickle the underside of that gray foot.

Kick. _Clonk_. Not a very strong kick, but the victim -- the villager -- he was clearly reactive, and Barry didn't have to boss anyone around to get them to lean into the cage and haul the corpses off him.

Barry could only see the legs, but...

"Pretty scrawny, isn't he," Bill said, eyebrows furrowed.

Barry could see those legs moving around, slow and awkward, trying to find purchase. He must have been stuck in some way, because he wasn't making any headway.

Bogdan shrugged eventually and caught him by the ankles and pulled, and it was like watching a half-drowned kitten fight against a bulldog.

Then the corpse that was stuck on his back spines popped free. "Whoa!" Bogdan shouted as he tripped and went down on his ass with grace and majesty. A few of his fellow jaegers snickered.

The experiment landed on the floor, flipped around like a snake, and went straight for his throat.

It wasn't a housecat anymore but a bobcat, feral and desperate, but the awkwardness of the blows alone told Barry his body sense was messed up and he'd never been trained to fight-- "Brawler," Bill whispered to him; Barry nodded. He was trying to punch, and impaling his own palms with his claws.

The whole kerfluffe ended with Bogdan flipping him on his side and sitting on top of him with a knee propped up on his crossed wrists, and the boy -- oh red fire, it _was_ a boy, not even a grown man -- the boy subsided, hissing like a snake from deep in his throat, and coughing, and... going limp.

Barry couldn't see his face, couldn't see how faked it was, how real, how well or how badly his new biology was handling things. How confused, how terrified he was.

One of the jaegers laughed, a short, despite-himself laugh, and then a couple more of them -- and then they exchanged weird looks and elbow nudges and fell silent again.

"Right!" Bill snapped, and was stepping forward between the jaegers before anyone thought to grab him. "Water, a blanket, find him some food before he starves trying to digest his own guts -- Bogdan, Pali, you're on containment. Do the back spines flex?"

Barry wanted to go too, but he hung back instead, let Bill play the bossy Spark more interested in the experiment than in the experimented on. So long as Bill wasn't getting in grabbing range or telling them to let the boy go -- which would be silly, as much as Barry wanted to; the boy might not be sane any longer -- they'd probably obey him and go with non-damaging methods of containment.

The mood was so _off_ , though.

Jaegers always had a joke on their lips, if not crass then dark and bloody, or all three at once; they loved the fight, they liked being of use to their Heterodynes, they were _proud_.

They weren't acting proud right now. They were quiet, whispery. Angry, for real, not just peeved that one of their brothers had stolen their kill or that an enemy wouldn't stand their ground and put up a real fight.

"General -- there might be others," he pointed out. _Slowly suffocating_ , he didn't add, but he felt like maybe his impatience had seeped through despite his best attempts.

Goomblast stared down at him for a long enough second that Barry felt he had missed something, said something stupid -- and then the massive man shook himself all over, like waking up. Like he honestly hadn't... huh. Was Goomblast _that_ off his game? Really? "Dem eet," he muttered. " _Hoy!_ Dis iz not a play! No gawping, check 'em all out, _now!_ "

The jaegers who weren't already guarding the exits or keeping watch on the other prisoners hopped to it with an efficiency that would have surprised anyone who'd been around them only casually. Barry knew that they cultivated their air of careless stupidity, but it was still mildly impressive.

He wasn't sure he liked the way they looked -- focused, grim. Quietly angry.

On the other side of the room Bill was still observing the not-jaeger, but the boy didn't seem to be moving much. At all. Might have lost consciousness again.

Barry went to check on the civilians.

The little girl was standing up -- five years old? Six? She was probably smaller than her real age, looked underfed in a way that had to have started long before the kidnapping. Her hands sort of touched the bars, but she didn't quite dare to hold on. The door was open -- but Konstantine and Radko were crouching just outside, sitting on their heels on both sides of the door, turned sideways to keep an eye on it while still being able to glance at the rest of the room.

"Hoy, Master Barry." Konstantine smiled up at him, unconvincingly. "Vhat's all happening over dere?"

Barry hesitated, sneaked a look at the inhabitants of the cage, lowered his voice. The old women were curled up together with blankets, eyes closed, looking more or less purplish around the lips. In shock, probably, which was bad, but dragging them out by force would not help. "There's one survivor? Looks like he's unconscious for now, we don't know yet how he's... Mnh."

"Jah, ve hear _dat_ noise." Konstantine grumbled, lower lip jutting out. "But vhat iz -- how -- argh, neffer mind, hy dun even know vhat Hy vant to know."

Barry startled himself chuckling, sobered up fast. "It would be a great help if we all knew what we needed to know."

Bill and Barry, for example, really needed to know how hard the jaegers would push for immediate disposal of that survivor, but it wasn't something they could ask. The final decision was going to be their father's either way, but all in one Saturn Heterodyne preferred his jaegermonsters to be happy.

"But den iz it not de case dat ve dun _need_ to know it anymore, if we _already_ know--"

The other jaeger pushed his knee with the tip of his saber, sending him on his ass. "Hoy, no feelosophy or Hy beats hyu upside de head again."

Barry bit down on a smile, sneaked a look at the little girl, who was still watching them from behind the bars like a miniature ghost. "Wrong formulation. I meant knowing what questions we should ask."

"Ho, dat meks more vith de sense. But doz dat mean ve ask kvestions all de time becawz of knowing everything we dun know-- ow!"

"Hy svear, Konstantine, if hyu start again...!" Radko groaned, and casually passed a dried but still edible apple through the bars without looking. The girl caught it when he dropped it, and waited until he'd taken his hand out and was using it to wag his finger menacingly at his compatriot to lift it to her mouth and take a bite.

"Are you cold?" Barry asked her quietly as he crouched by the door, a hand on Radko's shoulder for (unneeded) balance (for thanks, good job, thank you.) He pretended to pay attention to the pitcher of water on the ground in case staring made her flinch back. After a few seconds she shook her head.

"... Blanket," she said. She did indeed have a blanket, though it seemed pretty ratty. Barry was struck by the need to fuss at her collar, close the gap. He wanted his mother to be here so badly suddenly it stung in his eyes. How did she do it?

"Dey iz tough at dat age. Mine own leetle gurl once vent out naked in de snow und ran around like a chicken vith its head cut off for about fifteen minutes, und me und her momma tryink to ketch her. Slippery leetle tyke."

Barry pinched his lips. "... She got sick afterwards, didn't she?"

"... Vell, yes, but." Radko frowned at him; Barry made an apologetic face. "Not a lot, iz vhat Hy iz saying. Hyu vanna come out, sveetie?"

She thought about it for a minute, the apple hidden under her blanket, and then shook her head no dubiously.

Barry gave the jaeger a small smile, and patted his shoulder -- awkward, how did his father do it? (possessive) approval, so natural -- and then, as Radko was still looking at him with his eyebrows arched up from all that affection, he crab-walked inside the cage.

"--Hoy!"

" _Shhh_. They're half-unconscious and in shock, someone needs to check on them. Hey there, miss." He went around the girl, toward the back; he didn't want to corner her. He tried to step between the corpses, but sometimes there wasn't much of a choice. He worked on keeping his voice quiet, but cheerful. "My name's Barry, I don't know if you remember?"

She stepped back; she preferred to be against the bars with the jaegers on the other side than in Barry's reach. Okay. "You said. Before."

"Yeah. What's yours?" he asked, his back almost entirely turned on her, as he lifted a parchment-skinned wrist and started counting beats.

Her name was Liza, she was six and a half; one of the old ladies, after he helped her drink, turned out to be named Anna, and be a seamstress, and it was working, he was helping, they were calming down, they _believed_ him. The other two old ladies were still tense -- the man was still unconscious -- but if he kept at it...

"Master Barry," Jorgi said long-sufferingly from outside the cage. "Hy iz not sayink jaegerkin make any better nurse, but hyu iz still not a nurse. Annyvays, hyu brodder sez to tell hyu situation update: no other survivors, und he iz going through de labs vithout hyu right now nyah nyah nyah."

Puffing out, Barry opened his mouth to complain -- inventions to figure out (and destroy!), secrets to root out (and destroy!) -- and then looked at the prisoner he was helping drink because she couldn't lift the cup to her mouth, and breathed out.

"Tell him I don't even care and Liza likes me better than him, hah."

"Hy dun forget the hah." Jorgi sounded indulgent, amused. "Master Villiam sez iz de most relevant part."

"Having a pretty gurl vith hyu iz even better," Konstantine said, grinning at the first old lady, Anna, and wagging his eyebrows; Jorgi snorted at him and left.

Barry thought the middle lady had to have been waiting for the guards to look away at the same time; he had his back to the open door and the lot of them, so he wasn't sure what they were doing, probably watching Jorgi go, but he saw no other reason she would have chosen that instant to spring, a piece of broken tile in hand.

She was old, and fouled by the blanket tented over the lot of them, and desperate; she slashed at his eyes but Barry was already retreating, springing upright on the moving ground of dead bodies. His hand shot up to grab the top bars, haul himself farther out of reach. He knocked into the little girl, knocked her into the bars, deflected a second slash, and then Radko was inside the cage pinning her to the back wall by the throat.

"No!" Barry yelled. "No, _don't_ \-- contain, not--"

"Ssssh," the Jaeger... hissed, shushed, something in between. His eyes glowed like hellfire and all his teeth were showing to the gum. "Old bag ov bones, no threat," he said, growling underneath every word. "Vhat's even a leetle slash to hyu after hyu try to _help her_ , huh--"

Liza started crying.

Not very loud, but the room had gone silent and tense as everyone turned to check on Barry -- situation contained, Konstantine signaled even as Barry glanced back -- and her little gasping sobs carried under the sky-blue, hand-painted ceiling tiles.

A sudden yelp and the sound of tearing cloth had Barry itching to look back at the room, but this was more urgent; he slid sideways toward the door, picked Liza up, slipped out past Radko. She wriggled in his hold and sobbed a little louder, but he needed to be out of the cage so that Radko could stop pinning the old lady before she got hurt, and so he could check out whether he'd hurt Liza backing into her.

It was awkward; she wasn't tall for her age, but she wasn't a toddler anymore, and she squirmed, and as he turned shushing her to face the snarls and the thuds he saw the non-jaeger boy arrowing straight for them.

He was tackled halfway through the room -- snarled like a rabid dog, bit and kicked, no more punches now. Barry saw him plant both hands' claws knuckle-deep in a jaeger's flesh and yank down; blood and bits of flesh splattered them both, and he bared his teeth like a cornered dog when it didn't loosen Pali's hold any.

He was still relatively quiet, for the murderous expression on his face.

He wouldn't calm down, this time around, not even when exhaustion should have done him in. Lost to the rage? Barry bit his lip, hoped not. Almost half of surviving jaegers after the Brau had to be put down because they went crazy and never came back.

Seeing the pile-up, the blood, Liza cried harder, bit on her fist to smother the sound and the boy seemed to go _unhinged_ at that, and Barry -- oh.

"Liza?" he asked quietly, and tried awkwardly to rock her. "Liza, do you know that boy?"

"Monsters," was her only reply, and her shoulders shook harder.

Pinned down on his face now, hands and wrists restrained -- Pali knelt up across his back and couldn't sit down because of the quills bristling out of the boy's grimy skin; and the boy bucked, a move that should have dislocated his shoulders.

Barry breathed out, and walked toward him.

" _Master_ ," General Goomblast rumbled, but Barry didn't look at him.

Just at the boy's face, at the way he twisted like a snake, like he had too many segments in his spine, just so he could keep his night-black eyes on Barry and the little girl he carried.

"No, no, _monsters!_ " she whispered like someone who'd had to hide from some already in the past, and tried to escape out of his arms.

 _Not crazy_ , was Barry's first thought at seeing the stricken look on the boy's face.

"That's not a monster," he said, calm and clear, "that's a jaeger. Radko is a jaeger too, and he gave you an apple. They just look a bit scary."

"Ve _so_ iz monsters!" Pali protested with an honest-to-god pout. "Ve iz monsters vith de big teeth und everythink und--"

Someone Barry didn't see beaned him in the head with a shoe. Barry didn't see if there was still a foot inside -- he sincerely hoped not, but without much actual hope.

"Ve iz monsters vhat dun like de taste ov leetle gurls," General Goomblast said with a forbidding look at Pali. "Giff me a centipede effry day. Grub iz yum, leetle gurl is yuck. Yez, _ekzactly_."

Barry wasn't very sure Liza was listening much.

He discreetly looked over the crowd, but while some of the jaegers still watched the situation tensely in case Barry got suicidal enough to approach an unstable, dangerous experiment while carrying a victim, none of them looked... displeased, angry.

He'd thought they would have, for calling that boy a jaeger, for comparing them. The boy wasn't, not without the troth.

Maybe they'd missed the comparison. Maybe Barry had missed the reaction.

No kneejerk, violent rejection, at least. Good.

"If you want to be let up, you're going to have to stop biting people," Barry told the boy on the floor, and sat -- awkward with the girl, heavy -- on the tiles five or six feet in front of him.

A silent sneer answered him, and then a long, wary stare. Barry wished Bill were there.

"I'm Barry," he said, and felt a little stupid for repeating it so much. His mother had advanced the theory that introducing himself in a simple and forthright manner would help people feel connected to him, more grounded, see him as more than a scary little Spark. So far, he... wasn't sure it worked, or worked well enough; he wished there was a shortcut where people could just look inside him and know he meant to help and he didn't have to go through a whole dancing bear act first.

He patted Liza's back clumsily. She was huddled against his shoulder and kept stealing little glances at the boy and the jaeger sitting on top of him, still dripping blood a little.

"I don't mind if you don't want to tell me your name, but I do insist on not attacking people. It's pretty hard to feed you and--" he wouldn't want his wounds checked yet -- "find you some clothes not torn to rags if they have to sit on you in the meantime."

"Ve could manage if hyu eensist, Master Barry," Pali said, but rather dubiously. "Though Hy iz not as goot at getting pipple _dressed_..."

Barry cleared his throat. "Um. No, it'll be fine, but thank you, I guess."

"Also dere iz sumting kind of _ehhn_ about undressink leetle boyz," the jaeger continued, making a vaguely repulsed moue. Barry groaned.

"M'not little," the boy mumbled, head turtling up between his shoulders like he expected a slap to the back of it. "Go to hell."

Pali grinned (which over the shredded and blood-splattered uniform jacket looked mildly alarming; it wasn't all bad that the boy couldn't see it.) "Ho! Und how old iz hyu den, mister Big Shot? Five? Mebbe seffen?"

A weak wriggle. "Fourteen, back off."

Huh. "You're older than me?" He didn't look... well, Barry hadn't seen him standing properly, but he did seem pretty thin --

Liza inhaled so hard Barry looked at her in alarm, wondering if she'd breathed anything in.

"--Kirill?"

The boy looked up at her, cheek pressed to the cold tiled floor, and didn't say anything.

He looked about to pass out, the underside of his eyes dark as charcoal, eyelids heavy with exhaustion.

Sad, too, and small, and lost.

Barry let the girl go.

She crawled on hands and knees closer, cautiously; Barry hovered at her shoulder, just in case he was wrong. (He didn't think he was, but. Just in case.)

"Are you Kirill for real?" Her voice shook a little, but now she sounded almost more curious than anything.

The boy grunted. "What'd I look like, stupid."

Liza knit her eyebrows like that had been a serious question. "A monster?"

"Oh." A slow, dazed blink was his only reaction. "... Figures."

Barry wasn't sure how much he already understood of what had happened to him. He caught himself glancing up at Goomblast, as if the General might have a suggestion.

The behemoth of a jaeger crouched with surprising grace. The boy barely reacted, past a flicker of a glance. (Too exhausted to fight so never mind.)

"Hyu haff been given sumting based on de jaegerbrau, vhich creates jaegermonstern," Goomblast said, sounding oddly... calm, oddly impartial. "Vhich is vhat ve are."

Barry couldn't find a touch of anger in Goomblast any longer, but he'd had upwards of six centuries to learn to corral his feelings, and his features were far enough away from human to make reading them challenging at times, never mind the goggles...

No, Barry was the madboy in charge here, he couldn't -- he _couldn't_ leave it to Goomblast to lead, to decide. Even if -- maybe they wouldn't resent the victim for the actions of the criminals, after all, but maybe --

He didn't want even one of them to suggest they empty a cage and use it to cart the boy back home.

"Your little sister, then, I take it?" he asked. Now that he was looking, there was something in the length of their faces, the little bump in the middle of their noses... He didn't wait for confirmation, at any rate. "Alright. Pali will let you up and if you don't attack anyone you can sit up with your sister and drink something, you must be really dehydrated by now."

"I've got an apple," Liza whispered at the boy, like she was afraid to remind people. The boy only grunted in answer, eyes closed. Barry was suddenly worried he wouldn't be able to sit up even if Pali ever got off him. He flicked his hand at him -- move back -- but Pali looked up at Goomblast first, an eyebrow arched.

Goomblast hummed thoughtfully, and then tilted his head to make it clear he was looking at Barry.

"Ve vill do dat, but Master Barry, Hy tink hyu brodder might vant sum help nosing around de labs."

Barry stared back up, still crouching on the floor. "The lab that might be unsafe and full of unstable experiments?" he asked dryly. Goomblast snorted, smiled.

"De lab mine boyz feelz up all over und notink exploded. Hyu iz still not to touch anything first, und if hyu touch it second pliz wear de gloves, but hyu iz a _good_ boy about lab procedures und Hy iz not vorried. Hm?"

Huh. A bargain. Get the boy -- Kirill? -- get him to go free, but only if both Bill and Barry were out of the room, for observation. Sensible. And if he had a fit and savaged his sister, not a big loss in the end.

There was no way to be sure they wouldn't put him down or spirit him away to Saturn Heterodyne's biological lab the second Barry stopped standing right there, but then again, there was no way to be sure of it with Barry right here either. They only answered to him because their father had said to, and because they expected Bill not to forbid him access when it was Bill's turn to rule.

"Very well." He got up cautiously, cracked a tiny, subdued smile at Liza, and walked out. Behind him he could hear some jaegers whispering, and wished he knew what about.

"Ahoy!" Bill greeted him when he walked in the lab, with a smile that was bright and meaningless, distracting from how closely he looked at Barry. Barry shrugged and ambled up to him.

The lab was mostly clean. Fairly common setup for biological experiments -- oh, huh, a water tank with breathing mask, recently used; had any of the not-jaegers developed gills? -- but the tables were cleaned and Barry counted barely six or seven blood splatters, and not very big ones. Tidy.

It made the pile of busted restrains in the corner and the scratch marks in the tabletop even sadder somehow.

Bill waited until Barry had his gloves on and handed him a pile of notes. Barry started skimming through them for anything they might want to bring home.

"Anything interesting happening over there?" Bill asked casually. Barry hummed.

"Hm? Oh, the little girl is the surviving experiment's sister. Let's hope he doesn't eat her when they let him up."

The jaegers in the labs were currently poking and prodding and sniffing at everything they could get at, and they piled up anything interesting on one of the work slabs; Bill was sorting the pile into 'take home' and 'burn'. Most of it went to 'burn'. Barry dropped his notes there, picked up another folder.

"Little girl?" Bill asked, sounding bored, as he played with a -- "Oh hey! Defibrillator!"

"... Why does it look like a happy seahorse."

"Why should it _not_ look like a happy seahorse."

"Well, something like a thunderbird might be more thematically appropriate with the _purpose_ of the thing, and the décor would probably fit a quadruped better than a sea beast..."

Bill discharged the electric charge against a jar, which started bubbling. Barry sighed. Not even a good basis for a new and intriguing weapon.

The jaegers weren't paying them any attention.

"I just keep feeling like that thing should make me angry. It doesn't really _fit_ , you know." He just kept feeling like the boy should make the jaegers angry...

Bill snorted at him. "If you want to be a fop then fine, but if you're not even _feeling_ it... Anyway, maybe the seahorse was a present." He discarded it onto the 'burn' pile.

"I dunno," Barry said, looking up at the frescoes on the walls. Apple trees in bloom, sparrows. "Seems like good Uncle Liviu was pretty attached to his aesthetic. Strange to see him just taking in something that doesn't fit. Maybe he didn't really use it and it was just here to say he did. Like, say, if his--" -- children, which must be dead by now, their father would never spare the children, Barry had _played_ with his children -- "--wife got it for him, then he felt he had to keep it, but if she hadn't been here to care about it he would have taken it apart for parts in a hot second."

Yes, so, it had to be exceedingly clear to anyone not a really stupid jaeger that they weren't talking about the seahorse anymore.

At the same time Barry really wasn't sure of the theory he was advancing. It wasn't even a theory, just a faint, blurry hope that he couldn't quite pin down yet.

"Hy tink de seahorse might fit iffen he opens up a lab dat is painted like de sea," Jorgi said, musing, and dumped an armful of little jars into the incinerator. "Mebbe sum big lake. Sumting."

Barry stiffened, tried not to show he was stiffening. Bill arched a sharp eyebrow. "And is there a room like that yet? Because otherwise that's maybe a lot of work to accessorize a room."

"Vell, no, but mebbe he likes de remodeling."

Jorgi didn't wink at them. He _didn't_.

He was taking such pains not to look at them that he might as well have, though.

"Vhy iz hyu guyz effen talking about remodeling, ve iz about to torch de place?" Samo asked plaintively. Jorgi rolled his eyes and shoved him back at an instruments display.

Barry and Bill exchanged a long look, part discomfited, part... oh.

Jorgi couldn't have meant...

"I need to speak to Goomblast," Bill said under his breath. Barry nodded, feeling a bit dazed.

"Maybe not straight away, I think he wanted some time to observe..."

Frowning fiercely, Bill attacked his pile of things, sorting through the mess with a glow in his eyes that Barry knew intimately, that said it was going to get sorted in short order, and stay sorted, and after that maybe there would still be a couple of mountains to level while he was on a roll.

(It was an expression that brought into sharp relief how many things Bill had inherited from their father, be it force of will or moods, the cant of his dark, dramatic eyebrows; Barry would never, ever bring that up. Better that nothing came to mar this kind of determination.)

Bill was humming, not quite heterodyning yet but it was starting to echo, in the tiled room and into Barry's head both. The jaegers were smiling and Barry couldn't read it. He wished he'd spent more time with them, grilling them on everything rather than rely on observation and secondhand stories; they weren't behaving according to his model and it was throwing him off.

" _Okay done torch the rest!_ " Bill proclaimed, throwing his last handful onto the pile. Barry stuck what he was keeping under one of his arms -- sneaked a folder down his shirt, though he was pretty sure Samo had seen him.

One of the jaegers cheered and started dousing the walls with flammable oil. Bill stalked back toward the door; Barry reluctantly stayed behind to make sure the data got burned properly, even though he could probably trust Jorgi to handle it...

"Master Barry, do hyu tink hyu could make a big whoompy firebomb from de contents of dis here lab?" Jorgi asked, with a thin veneer of innocence over longsuffering amusement.

Barry stared at him for two whole and entire seconds that his brother was using to talk to Goomblast without him, and had the incendiary cocktail ready in the twelve next seconds. Considering the chemicals _already_ in the pile --

"Fire in the hole!" he called out, and ran out, the jaegers pelting out after him, laughing like hyenas.

 _Fwoomph_.

Laughing, Samo slapped him in the back; Barry stumbled forward two whole steps, tripped over a corpse's ankle, and almost impacted with Bill's chest straight on. He gripped his brother's arm to balance himself, looked up, realized he was smiling a tiny little bit (realized he wanted to make a better bomb, maybe one that made a funnier sound -- oh, or purple fire? Purple with red stripes.) (The jaegers had liked it. Which was bad because bombs were most of the time bad in which case Barry was also bad for liking the bomb first--)

Fire was licking at the edge of the door behind him, he could hear it, but the smoke was really pretty minor and the -- aha, here came the sprinklers. A bit slow, huh. Possibly from when the jaegers in charge of that stuff had dismantled them to look for inevitable last-minute poison misters.

"So -- ah. Am I interrupting?"

General Goomblast sat in a crouch against the wall maybe four feet away from the survivor and his sister, and watched Barry with a quirk to his lips that Barry thought might be patient, polite amusement. Bill quirked an eyebrow at Barry pointedly, eyed the lab, opened his mouth, and then changed tack mid-word.

"Nope! Pretty good idea you just had there, brother. Men! Douse the bodies in oil. Radko, take four helpers to carry the villagers, you're supervising."

After pinning that old lady to the wall? Barry cleared his throat. "Uh, actually--"

Radko was already grinning, all fangs out, from his place by the cage. "Jah, Master Villiam!"

Bill nodded firmly; Barry sighed. Oh well. So long as he was in charge and not carrying anyone _personally_...

"We're done here, time to go!"

He looked at Goomblast and he hesitated for one second -- because Goomblast was a General, had been a General for the last couple hundred years, and Bill was a teenage boy of just about fifteen years.

But a Heterodyne. Who might one day be _the_ Heterodyne.

He'd never learn to be in charge if they didn't try him out in command sometimes, everyone here knew that. The problem was...

The problem was, even if Goomblast was planning to run with whatever Bill wanted, even if it ran the lot of them over a (non-lethal) cliff, their father was just above, to double-check and countermand as needed.

The ancient jaeger unfolded from his crouch, stood huge and steady on his feet. "Und hyu orders about dis young -- boy, Master Villiam?"

Out of sight of the room Barry's fingers clamped down hard on Bill's elbow.

There was a second of silence that seemed to stretch centuries, where Barry barely heard the gentle roar of the fire in the next room and the tread of jaeger feet hopping to douse everything.

Bill squared his shoulders. "Put two guards on him, but I don't think he can walk far--"

Hunched against the wall, the boy glowered, didn't answer.

Goomblast nodded, still giving away nothing; "Jah, a fair bet dere."

"... Needs carried to the transport too." He started looking around -- probably for a jaeger who could handle getting bitten without lashing out, or who wouldn't even notice it in the first place...

Barry took a couple of steps to the side, crouched a few feet away. "Kirill, right?"

The boy looked up at him, eyes black almost all the way through.

"We're going to torch the place," Barry said, quietly. "Do you want to try to walk? I think you won't go far, but it wouldn't be the first time you surprise us, so... hey, why not. Think you can?"

The boy was frowning. Barry was pretty sure _Bill_ was frowning. Goomblast wasn't, but that wasn't all that helpful.

"If I walk, 'm gonna roast, huh?"

Barry shrugged. "That's one of the possibilities. Another of the possibilities is that one of the jaegers carries you out, and you bite them _after_ you're clear of the fire, and that'd be... well, pretty jerkish, but still probably less risky overall."

Something inside the lab tinkled like broken glass; fire licked at the tiles across the entrance, cracking a few of them. The sprinklers weren't strong enough to smother the chemicals coating everything.

"Afterward--"

Bill threw a hand up in the air. "Can we discuss this in a place where your little sister won't _smother_?"

The boy hissed quietly, upper lip curling up on probably more fangs than he'd used to possess; he braced on the wall, on Liza's shoulder when the little girl fit herself under his hand (like it was nowhere near the first time she had to keep him standing, thought Barry.) "You shut your trap about my sister," he growled, and took a step forward, and possibly no one was surprised when Goomblast halted his fall with a huge hand to the chest about three inches from the ground.

"Vell. Dat does shorten de talks considereebly," Goomblast said, and handed his limp body to Jorgi, who slung it over his shoulder like it was a half-empty sack of potatoes. Goomblast then offered a gallant hand to Liza, who looked extremely dubious -- but by then the fire was starting to spread to the oil-soaked rags the corpses closest to the door were still wearing. Barry wasn't too surprised when Goomblast swept her off the floor and sat her onto his arm, or when she merely grabbed for his coat.

After that everyone was running out.

Between the secret lab and their emergence into firelight and cloudy dusk Barry had reacquired his guard of four; Bill was similarly surrounded.

They came out on a slope, crossed the inflatable bridge over the moat at a fast jog. The castle over and behind them was half in ruins, but the crack of weaponry was unmistakable -- their father wasn't done.

The little burg at the foot of the castle was, of course, burning. Too far away for details, but Barry could recognize jaeger in the way some of the little shapes darted around almost too fast to track, or ambled with casual unconcern.

"Master Barry!" Cosmin growled, and pushed him lightly in the back. "Tink _und_ run, pleez!"

Barry ran, hopped over a low wall, went around an overturned cart. An explosion shook the courtyard before them -- quieter than the ones farther away, jaegers at the hole; Goomblast's order, making a way through, and someone boosted him over the pile of stones after Bill, and then they were ...

Not out of range of the battle, not so long as they still could hear and see the lights so clearly.

"Chariots parked dis vay, Master Villiam," Goomblast said, pointing with a thumb, the girl still sitting on his arm with both her hands gripping tight at his uniform. "Sacking ov de village dat vay--"

Bill grimaced faintly.

"Jah, jah, dey hardly need us -- und hyu poppa dat vay."

A shrieking bomb went off, and all the jaegers with mobile ears flattened them; Barry had to make do with pressing his hands on his own.

"Hyu poppa iz -- mebbe -- a _tad_ busy."

Bill and Goomblast stared at each other. Barry was vaguely aware of the crippled man stirring over a jaeger's shoulders, of the too-pale, dazed look on two of the old ladies, his attacker amongst them, but he could see nothing but his brother and the Jaegergeneral, face to face, silent.

There was ... a chance to take here, a huge one.

Goomblast was borderline doing handstands pointing at it.

Barry stepped up to his brother, but he didn't even need to nudge him before Bill nodded and firmed his stance.

"We don't want to distract him now, that could be fatal to a lot of us. Send -- one of your men, to tell him he can bring down the castle now... Though really the fire we started is going to mine the foundations something awful and with the rate of fire the walls are sustaining -- ow, Barry!"

"We've got no time for calculations now, the castle's coming down! Give your orders already!"

It was excitement from their -- so far -- success, and a burning desire to be _gone_ from here, fast as possible, to release the peasants far away from here before their father could think to requisition them, and even as he did it he knew if this happened before any other army he would be undermining his brother's authority, and he winced, but Bill just shoved at his shoulder right back and exclaimed with that raw determination, that sparkle of challenge-accepted, "Right! Everyone to the transports! We're going home. General--"

Goomblast nodded, and Barry really didn't think he was imagining that smile. With a mouth that size, even the subtle twitches--

"Edi! Hyu is to go to de Master und tell him ve haff departed und dere iz fire in de labs und all destroyed." A bit quieter. "Dun distract him too much, he vill not vant to hear it yet, just dat he ken raze it all down now. De details, hyu tell to General Gargantua, iffen he asks."

With barely a signal, they all took off at a smart trot together, Barry's guard herding him along when he didn't start moving sharply enough.

They went down the slope to where their transport was waiting, Barry's senses on alert for the next shrieking bomb, the next trap, and it seemed almost too early when Cosmin caught him under the armpits and boosted him up to one of the forward segments of the caterpillar clank transport.

He stayed standing, pressed against a porthole, as the rest of his guards hopped in, catching glimpses of the boy and his sister in the very last segment, not catching glimpses of Bill already spirited away in the first.

The caterpillar gave a low, metallic shudder, and then it was scampering away through the forest at speed, swinging and swerving until the light show over the castle stopped piercing the leaf cover, until Barry let go of the window.

He let Mile catch his elbow when the caterpillar flowed over a rock or some other slope, let him guide him to a seat and buckle him in. Mile smiled encouragingly, and Barry grunted -- yes, thank you -- and shuffled his weight so he could stick the back of his head in a corner and not have it bounce around so much.

He'd expected to think and plot and fret about the prisoner situation -- about Liviu's children -- but in the end fatigue hit him like a rock and he spent the rest of the way home alternating between dozing and daydreaming about giving the caterpillar clank functional wings.

None of his designs worked, though.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is unbetaread, i hope it doesn't show. if you spot a grammatical whoops, feel free to tell me, but don't feel obligated either.
> 
> i am so stuck on chapter three. the stuckiest.

Barry woke up, and instantly regretted it. It was indecently early, he could tell. He lifted his head off his pillow to glare at Bill, whose fault this certainly was, but Bill was hiding under his own pillow and doing a good impression of a very dead thing.

(Like the corpses yesterday. Okay, so maybe not that good.)

Barry let himself fall back, and saw his mother on the way down, so he had to sit back up. She stood at the door, knuckles still raised to knock.

"Why'd you -- oh." Oh. Right. They'd asked her to. Barry rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the lines of his pillow pressed into his cheek. "Okay, I'm awake. Bill? Bill, get up."

"Mnrghfrrgh."

His mother smiled faintly, and then glided inside already sobering up. Barry took in a bracing breath and tore his covers off all at once, before he could dither another five minutes in the toasty warmth of his blankets.

"Billy, darling," his mother was saying, resting a hand on Bill's shoulder. Barry looked down at the floor to hunt for his slippers. Their father had insisted that if their mother was going to raise them out of the Castle, that she would at least choose a house that had enough bedrooms and labs for everyone; they were the ones who'd chosen to share to free up more lab space. Most of the time it worked fine, but the privacy aspect reared its head at random...

And Bill was turning over to burrow further under his own blankets, refusing to let their mother wake him up.

"Bill!" Barry called, gathering his clothes. "Up and at 'em, those people won't save themselves!"

"Auuuuugh, _fine!_ "

Barry disappeared in the attached bathroom to get dressed. It was cold, unpleasant work and he thought longingly of going back to his bed, of huddling there just another half-hour -- their father wouldn't be up before _noon_ after a day like yesterday, there was _time_.

Bill barged in when he was getting buttoned up, eyes half-closed, and grunted and waved vaguely; Barry shuffled out, rolling his eyes.

Their mother was still sitting on Bill's bed, waiting for them. Oh.

Barry put his shoes on. The solid ones, with the steel-armored toes.

Then he saw a smear of blood on them from the corpses yesterday and wiped it industriously off with a handkerchief, since using his sleeve before his mother seemed... not appropriate, somehow.

He could have put on softer shoes, but he didn't know what today would bring. Better be prepared.

"Barry?"

Barry ducked his head. His shoes might have more blood elsewhere, better check. "Mm?"

"I can't tell if you're going to do something dangerous or stupid," she said, sounding dry and a little amused.

"Not stupid," Barry replied. "Not... very dangerous either. I don't think. We'll be safe. The Castle wouldn't let anything happen."

Yeah, unless the one to take umbrage was their father.

"It's necessary, though," he said, and looked up, met her eyes, tried to impress on her how necessary it was.

Grabbing all the authority they had and leveraging it and wheedling and wriggling through loopholes and possibly even _lying_... They would be lucky if it didn't devolve into an arm-wrestling contest with their father, and if it did, their father would win, no questions asked, and that would be... pretty horrible.

Couldn't not try.

Couldn't risk their mother telling them no, either, it's too dangerous, too early. Barry thought she would approve of the theory, of the intent, but the execution...

His mother stared back, brow just barely furrowed, until Bill came out and she leveled that same look back on him.

"Alright, we've got to go," Bill said while pretending not to avoid her eyes, and Barry got up, grateful for the escape.

"I won't stop you," their mother said firmly, and followed them to the door. "But don't even try to tell me you routinely go up to the Castle every morning after your father has--"

"Liviu wanted to make jaegers," Bill said, cutting her off, as he cascaded down the stairs. Barry ended up stuck behind his mother, following at her more sedate pace, and he winced.

"He _did?_ " Their mother briefly stopped in her tracks, and then descended faster, hand running along the banister. "That _stupid_ man, what did he think would happen? _Sparks!_ " she muttered as she went. "But what is there left to do now? I can't imagine Saturn--"

"Liviu _succeeded!_ " Bill barked, and yanked the kitchen door open.

And paused in the doorway, staring. Huh.

"... Well. That explain certain things," their mother said, and joined Bill in the doorway. "Like the unexpected guests who won't _leave_."

When Barry finally managed to make it through the door he found Jorgi sitting at the kitchen table, drinking out of one of the good porcelain cups. His uniform jacket was dripping water onto the floor. He nodded to Bill and Barry, slinked their mother a long, unreadable side-look, and took another sip.

"Goot morning, young Masters."

"What are you doing in here?" Bill asked as he walked in. "I didn't think Mother would ever let one of you step a single foot in."

Jorgi snorted. "Hy inseested."

"He leaned on the doorbell with all his weight for ten whole minutes," their mother corrected dryly. "And then when it broke he started knocking inappropriate songs on the doorjamb. I don't understand how that didn't wake you."

Barry vaguely wondered where in that had their mother thrown the bucket of water at him, and how he had talked his way inside after _that_. But there was toast to snatch up and stuff in his mouth and it could wait.

"So," she said dryly, fists on her hips. "An outsider, making jaegers. Interesting."

Barry and Bill tensed together, but Jorgi didn't react past a quick twitch of his upper lip and a look of utter dislike, which their mother snorted vindictively about.

"Verra much," he said blandly. "Master Villiam, Master Barry?"

"I'm pretty sure we didn't request an escort yesterday," Bill pointed out as he buttered himself another piece of toast.

"Jah, but hyu might vell get lost vithout one today." A casual shrug, a bland, lying face. "Just in case, Master, no vorries."

"Get lost, on the way to...?"

Barry winced, watched cautiously as she marched around the table to the coffee machine and wrung another two cups out of it.

"Um, seeing the... the jaeger boy," Barry said, sneaking Jorgi a look, but the man kept on being absolutely not insulted.

Which didn't make _sense_. Becoming a jaeger was a honor, but a jaegermonster was nothing without the troth that bound them to their brothers and to the Heterodynes, just a monstrous experiment. Usually you took the oath first, and the potion only second -- and with nine out of ten chances of death, people damn well _meant_ the oath. The boy had sworn nothing; he wasn't even a Mechanicsburger. He was a walking security breach, and an insult to their brotherhood.

"The jaeger _boy_ ," their mother repeated, standing with Barry's cup forgotten in her hand.

Barry sneaked his brother a look. Bill shrugged, glanced back. _Your slip-up, your clean-up_. Jerk.

"... How old?" their mother said, grim and resigned already. Barry winced.

"Fourteen and, I dunno, five or six," Bill said with faked ease. "The little one isn't a jaeger, though, but I doubt her brother would take getting separated very well."

Which was great for leverage. Which was not great for anyone not keen on her being leveraged on.

" _Right_ ," their mother said. "Bill, Barry, waffles and fruit, I'll be right back."

Barry blinked at the door, picked up his cup of coffee where Teodora had left it on the table, and then looked at Bill. And then at Jorgi, just in case.

"Hy tink she tinkz dey iz in some oubliette vit no breakfast," Jorgi said, nose in his cup, and snorted again.

It sounded pretty disdainful. "And they're not?" Bill asked casually as he pulled the fruit basket closer to pick a few apples and apricots.

But Jorgi pretended not to have heard, too busy sipping at the dregs of his drink. Barry got up to make waffles. Fortunately, the batter was already ready.

"Anyone want one, while I'm at it? Bill?" He hesitated, and then kept going, casual, his back still turned. "Jorgi?"

Jorgi laughed, quiet and deep in his throat. "Thenk hyu, Master Barry, but Hy already ate. Vould be pure greed at dis point."

Bill snorted, flashed the jaeger a side grin. "What's so bad about greed, I will ask you."

Friendly overtures toward one of their father's faithful warmongering monsters. So _weird_.

"Hah. Hokay, iffen hyu insist, thenk hyu."

That they were being accepted was even weirder.

The improved waffle iron worked fast, at any rate. Barry piled up the results on a plate, slid it along the table, made some more with the vague thought that if the kids didn't manage to eat everything the leftovers could be used for bribery.

The kids. Heh. The boy was older than Barry was.

Their mother came back, wicker basket on her arm, dropped it on the tabletop. "Clothes," she said briskly, "unscented soap, hairbrush, and a toy horse for the girl." She picked up the waffle plate, wrapped it in a hand towel, stuck it and the fruit in the basket. Jorgi chewed pensively on his waffle, watching her.

"How many blades in de horse," he asked, casual and musing, and their mother stiffened, glared.

"None. I wouldn't give a blade to a _six-year-old_."

"Stinky smoke screen? Multi-tool? Skeleton key?"

Barry winced. Whoof, was this a staring contest. "I'm sure Liza would love a horse, but if you really don't think she should have it--"

"Hy dun care vat it's got in it," Jorgi said, flicking his hand casually, and swallowed the other half of his waffle in one bite. "Ve go?"

Bill snorted, but swallowed the rest of his waffle and got up. "Might as well. C'mon, slowpoke."

"Hey," Barry protested. "Like you can talk, you took ages to wake up."

He picked up the basket, and they walked out, their mother following them to the door, her brow knit in doubt and worry.

Bill and Jorgi started down the street immediately, but Barry paused, the basket held in both hands before his knees, uncertainly.

"We'll send word if--"

... If anything happened? Something definitely would. And if it happened fast enough they would not have time for it.

"--if there's anything you can do to help, we will. You don't... You won't mind?"

He squirmed a little at the look she gave him, all soft and sad even though she smiled, too. "I'll be there the minute you need me. Good luck, Barry."

He wanted to ask if she was insulted or hurt that they weren't taking her along to help, today -- who else could ever reliably sway their father, really?

But he'd be more likely to offer her Liza and her brother as lamed pets in a cage, if she insisted on keeping them alive. Just... There, now they can't run or blab and they're not even murdered, problem solved.

It had to be last resort. _She_ had to be last resort.

"Well, are you coming or not!" Bill called from the end of the street, and Barry yelled back, "Yeah, yeah," and took off at a trot to catch up.

"So where are we going?" Bill inquired a minute later. "I was pretty sure the Castle could direct us..." Unless it'd been asked otherwise.

Unless they'd been put elsewhere. Goomblast had only said he would take care of it before he sent them off to bed. Barry had assumed...

Barry had not wanted to assume.

At any rate, Jorgi just hummed and said, "Dun vorry, ve gets there no problem."

"That's not an answer."

"It iz so an answer, just not de vun hyu vanted."

"Ah, but it's a jerk answer!" Bill said.

Jorgi snorted in amusement. "Dat still doz not invalidate it being an answer."

"It's an answer that avoids the actual question in favor of addressing a hypothetical motive for the question instead," Barry said, joining in tentatively.

The jaeger looked at him and laughed quietly. "Dem, vos hoping hyu mebbe miss dat one. But ennyvays, Master Bill, hyu iz going de wrong way."

Bill paused at the corner of the street that went up to the Castle, watched the jaeger, and then slowly, deliberately walked back to him.

They kept going down the main avenue, the one that ringed the castle entirely. Barry felt an odd trepidation -- there was the jaeger barracks this way but surely not, or there was --

"I think we had better not tell Mother we went in through the bar levels," Bill said dryly, and pointed his thumb at the distinctive roof of Mamma Gkika's bar.

Jorgi's face expressed disbelief and a vague confusion that there might be anything wrong about two young teenagers in _that_ bar, but all he said was, "All de dancing gurls are in bed at dis hour, but iffen it helps ve ken go through de secret passage."

"Aw," Bill said, not at all seriously. Well, Barry hoped it was 'not at all serious' and not 'vaguely serious', because he might be going through some quite disturbing puberty twitches himself but... Urgh. No. Anyway he kicked his brother, just in case.

"Ow. Brat."

Barry rolled his eyes, because he was too mature to stick out his tongue. Bill knuckled at his hair.

They trudged down the passage after Jorgi. Barry's free hand trailed the wet paved stones of the passage; he nodded politely at the couple of monsters they passed, going about their business. One of them doffed their hat at him.

Barry wasn't sure whether the bar had been built first, and the wounded jaegers had sneaked from, Barry wasn't sure, the jaegerhall or the Castle's recovery room (surely there had to be at least _one?_ ) to its cellars until it was fait accompli, or if it had been built on top of a preexisting jaeger hospital to _keep them there_. He wasn't sure anyone but the Generals still knew. It was just a thing by now.

The fact was that if you weren't either a jaeger or a Heterodyne or _maybe_ the service staff, you did not go there. That General Goomblast had brought Kirill there ...

When Barry followed his brother inside he didn't know if he was surprised to find, in addition to General Gkika (this was, after all, her house), Generals Goomblast and Khrizhan, sitting together around a table and looking bleary. Gkika and Khrizhan were still in nightclothes, Khrizhan wrapped in a fur-lined robe to ward off the chill of the stone walls. Goomblast meanwhile looked like he hadn't yet gotten to sleep and was still in yesterday's uniform. (Or maybe he'd slept in yesterday's uniform. That was also possible.)

Jorgi clicked his heels, saluted. "De young Masters, sirs!"

Khrizhan yawned until his jaw cracked. "Jah, thenk hyu, Jorgi. Schtay nearby, ve might yet need hyu. Goot morning, Master Villiam, Master Barry."

Bill nodded back casually, pulled a chair out. Barry followed suit, though he couldn't pull off the exact same level of careless confidence.

"Hyu boyz got any breakfast?" General Gkika asked them, yawning in turn. "Ve gots plenty... or ve vill in a minute... Vhat iz dat girl doink."

Barry shook his head, even as he tucked the basket against the leg of his chair. "Thank you, but we already ate."

"Tch. Growing boyz need der second breakfast too," she muttered, but didn't insist. She looked bleary, eyelids puffy from lack of sleep, her skin a murky bruise-purple.

Silence. Barry fought not to shift in his seat. He was glad when one of Gkika's human employees walked in with a trolley.

"Wouldn't say no to some bacon, after all!" Bill said, and Goomblast smiled approvingly and handed him a plate. The girl didn't stay, leaving the trolley behind, and closing the door neatly and firmly after herself. "And while we're at it," Bill continued, spearing a piece of bacon on his fork, "I'd love an update on what happened since yesterday."

Khrizhan snorted at him, an amused sound. Barry had to admit it hadn't been all that subtle. Kind of wrecking-ball-ish, in fact. Sighing, he accepted the plate Gkika was pushing at him with one hand as she shoveled food in her mouth with the other hand.

Khrizhan took the time to swallow his mouthful and break a loaf of bread in two to slather butter and jam on it, but once he answered, it was to the point. "Hyu poppa schtill doesn't know de boy ekzists." A shrewd, pointed look. "Iz, of corze, de first item on de list as soon as he vakes up."

Goomblast nodded his huge head. "Iz too bad he vos in no mood to hear any details yesterday, but at least de situation is not vhat any of us call urgent."

Barry closed his eyes briefly, filled his lungs to the brim. There -- this. Unmistakable.

The Jaegerkin did not want what the Heterodyne would have wanted -- and they knew it.

"I'd... like to know your reasoning," Bill asked -- quieter, more cautious. "I admit we were sure that you would want -- that is, that you'd want him disposed of summarily, that you wouldn't care past the theft. It was -- wrong. We were wrong. I'm sorry." He met Khrizhan's eyes, and then Goomblast's and Gkika's. Gkika was smiling, a small, fey thing.

Barry nodded wordlessly, looked at them as well, fork abandoned in his plate.

He still didn't think they secretly were blameless angels; not a one of them didn't enjoy the battlefield, they'd been chosen to be the Heterodyne's elite troops for a _reason_ \-- but Bill and Barry had misjudged them anyway, and it was not something they could afford, not if they could be made into _allies_.

"Ach -- hyu deed noting wrong. Hyu momma, now--"

" _Alexi_ ," Gkika snapped, before Bill and Barry were even done bristling. "Dey momma dun vant to know us for a _reason_ , und effen if she deed, not a lot ov us vant to know _her_. Dun go und put everything on her back now, iz chust as much de fault of de Master for not insisting dey see more ov us as leetle tykes."

Khrizhan looked at her, incensed. "De Master iz _not_ \--"

" _Enuff!_ " Goomblast growled, hitting a low note that seemed to shiver against the stone walls. "Ve haff a reason to be here, and it iz not to insult der boyz' momma. Hyu vant dem to valk right back out?"

Khrizhan sat back and crossed his arms with a huff. "Hy vos not -- oh, _fine_."

"Goot," Goomblast said, mouth drawn in an especially flat line.

"Yez, great, shot opp."

Barry cleared his throat, side-eyeing Khrizhan a little. "I agree with General Goomblast, if we could move off the topic of our parents' parenting decisions, that would be nice."

Gkika clapped her hands. "Majoritee, topic closed! Alexi, _hy know vhere hyu sleeps_."

Khrizhan blinked at her in confusion. "Vhell ov cause hyu know, hyu--"

" _Und Hy know hyu iz not gonna sleep dere much longer iffen hyu dun shot opp_."

Khrizhan subsided, grumbling, and then sighed. "Right. Sorry. Ve got off de topic."

"I _was_ about to say," Bill said, face carefully not sarcastic.

"Vell den, all mine apologies," Khrizhan said. "Und as for our reasoning..."

"We understood," Barry said, weighing each word carefully, "that taking the Jaegerbrau was an affair of pride and loyalty and that... you'd feel insulted."

"Ve do," Goomblast said, neutral, and lifted a tea cup to his mouth to sip delicately. "Hyu iz right so far."

"It iz family und pride und _love_ \-- und vas twisted to commit _rape_." Khrizhan's upper lip curled up, baring his tusks to the root. "Ve _iz_ furious. But not at de boy. He deed noting but survive, vithout even de encouragements und knowledge of his Master or de support of his brodders to show it could be done."

Oh.

Barry looked down at his plate, and felt sad. If he'd been a Mechanicsburger, it wouldn't even have been a question -- they'd have taken him in, and been proud of him for defying even steeper odds. (One out of seventy.)

'Rape' was a surprising word for it. One that Barry's mother might have used, but the jaegers themselves seeing it that way...

"Hy do not pretend to know vhat should be done about him," Khrizhan said with a sigh. "But de lower ranks -- dey are all aflutter over de whole ting. Sum ov dem doz not like it at all, dat he has taken no oaths, but even den vhat dey vant is a quick, merciful death. Dat a child survived de Brau, yet iz only goot enuff for de labs vould... bother sum ov dem."

Goomblast inclined his head, the corner of his mouth folding down in sad disapproval. "Dey iz bothered now. Und yez, sum ov dem are no goot at tellink de why or how ov der own feelingz und might be angry at de boy in reaction. Doze ov us that ken see de logical need to know how much of our secrets vas stolen vill understand in dey heads vhy hyu poppa vill vant to open him up, but most ov uz did not join for de tinking."

Bill nodded thoughtfully, lips pinched. "I... see. Yes, this is certainly a complex situation. Really delicate. Of course people are going to react differently."

"Are the Generals similarly divided?" Barry asked, because that was the next logical step, and because there were only three of them here -- and that didn't necessarily mean much, but _what if it did?_

Gkika looked at him, skin slowly darkening to a reddish brown like drying blood, expression remote. "Zog vants to present de child to hyu poppa und ask for his quick death," she said, "as it iz de best dat ken be hoped for. Zadipok agrees, only he doz not vant to beg for it much."

"--Oh."

"Gargantua tinks de child should be keeld und his corpse giffen to hyu poppa -- provoke him to attack, so he at least dies fightink, und for a brand-new one it should not be hard to push him to dat -- might happen vithout even trying und if de guard misjudges how much he ken take, eh, dat happens. Und Øsk washes hiz hands ov de whole ting." Gkika drained her tea cup, topped it off from the whisky bottle.

Well.

That was certainly... something. Their best allies in the whole list were Gargantua, who was ready to go behind their father's back to grant the boy a warrior's death since Saturn certainly would prefer him to be delivered alive to the slab, and Zog, whose requests might actually have some weight, but who didn't even think he could request any more than that.

"And the last one doesn't concern himself with internal affairs," Bill said, thoughtful, and then looked up to scan the three of them. "And you?"

Khrizhan, Gkika and Goomblast exchanged looks. "Ve... vould prefer he lived," Goomblast said eventually. "Only dat requires a first step ve iz not sure he ken even take."

"Which is?" Bill asked, eyes sharp.

"He takes de oath," Goomblast said simply.

Khrizhan shrugged, sighed. "Und mean it. Vhich iz de harder part."

And was _trusted_ to mean it, which was hardest of all.


End file.
